I think it’s about time I got my hands in the dirt again. I mean, after all, here it is the middle of April, winter has basically done its worst, and the planters out on the deck are calling me. “Come on,” they are saying, “this year it will be different.”

It will come as no surprise to the mothers who read these lines that children are, or soon will be, back in school. Shawnee Mission schools began this week; children in the De Soto school district will start next Wednesday.

Dumfries, Va. — Surely I am not the first to realize that people back here are different from the rest of us. They talk and act differently, and the latter is nowhere more apparent than when they get behind the wheel.

However much one likes to travel, you reach a point when you’re ready to be home. Usually, as is the case now, that happens when you’re about a thousand miles away from all the familiarities and comforts of life around the old homestead.

We don’t have much luck with exotic species, I’m afraid. Other bird-watchers may chalk up an elusive red-breasted bumbersnatch or blue-winged shrike or whatever, but we have had to content ourselves with the normal progression of finches and such.

The years take their toll, sure enough, and not just in the expected places. I think we all expect that our bodies will eventually fail, or at least that we won’t always be able to do the things we could when we were young... But some things we expect to last.

It’s hard to fully appreciate the onset of spring when we really haven’t had a winter worthy of the name. Be that as it may, it’s official: the Vernal Equinox, which heralds the first day of spring, occurred at 12:14 a.m. CDT on Tuesday.

Every so often a song will sort of lodge in my memory, and I’ll find myself humming it as I go about my daily tasks. The songs of our youth transport us back into those times — not carefree times, necessarily, but still times we like to remember all the same.

Driving back from a family errand in Nebraska on Sunday, we fought the wind all the way. Stiff north winds, with gusts up to 30 mph or better, stirred up great clouds of dust along Interstate 29; sometimes it was like driving through a fog, but a dry fog of dust. Along toward sunset, the sun was barely visible, a golden orb viewed through the ochre fog.

We’ve had such a mild winter, I wonder how we’ll know when spring gets here. Maybe we won’t even notice; maybe one day, we’ll just turn around and the flowers will have burst into blossom and the trees will have put on a new coat of leaves without our noticing any change.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to turn back the clock (well, okay, maybe just a little), and I do relish the relationship I have with my grown children. But I can’t help but feel a bit wistful when I think of the times that their problems were a lot easier to solve.

There was a song by Garth Brooks that made the rounds a few years ago about unanswered prayers. I had occasion to think of this the other day while watching a documentary called “Deep Water.” It was about the ill-fated voyage of one Donald Crowhurst, a 36-year-old engineer from Great Britain who perished during a single-handed round-the-world sailing race in 1969.

It’s taken the best part of a week, but the birds have finally returned. We were gone just a day short of two weeks over the holidays, and during that time the birds who normally visit the feeders off our deck out back emptied the feeders and went off one knows not where in search of better pickings.

Creating road signs is, I guess, something of a specialized art, at least when it comes to getting all the information needed into just a few words on a diamond-shaped warning sign. This leads to some curious syntax, to wit...

When the size of your household swells from two to eight for a few days, and when you’re making special, festive meals, a lot of that food gets left behind to fill up the refrigerator. There’s only so much you can do with leftover turkey once you’ve used all the parts that are good for sandwiches, after all. Turkey tetrazzini, anyone?

Like the fellow said, when you’re up to your hips in alligators, it’s a little hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp... The point is, we get so frustrated with our problems and our challenges that we tend to forget our blessings.

The house is quiet now, but we’re counting the days. Before long, the halls will ring with children’s laughter and the air will be heavy with the scent of good cooking. For a brief time it will seem as if the rafters are groaning with the all-too-uncommon burden of burgeoning life.

I have so far resisted all entreaties to pick the last fruits green, so we can fix fried green tomatoes or some such delicacy. I stubbornly hope that, if we can somehow just hold the inexorable change of the seasons at bay for a little longer, we may yet harvest a few more tomatoes for salads and sandwiches, or to savor by themselves.

Summer is nearing its end, and the end can’t come too soon to suit me. We had a taste of this last week, before it started to warm up again over the weekend. Now, after a couple of warm days, it’s supposed to cool off again.

Like most countries in Europe, the British have continued to invest in their passenger railroads. The result is that you can get almost anywhere you want to go in Great Britain by rail... But, although you can get almost anywhere, the operative word in that sentence is “almost.”

I confess to a love of the open road. I’ve been driving for more than 50 years now, but I still get a charge from setting out on a long trip — especially through country that I haven’t visited previously.

Now, when the wind blows from the north in these latitudes, it’s blowing right off the Arctic Circle. And when it blows across water that is only 42 degrees to begin with, there’s nothing that’s going to warm it up very much. Let’s just say it was cold and let it go at that.